Today is St. Patrick's Day.

Happy St. Patrick's Day to everybody.

But today is also a day when six Asian American women were murdered in cold blood, perhaps,

because they were Asian in the background.

So, we have a lot to celebrate and a lot to mourn.

You'll hear about both on The Dirt Show.

Happy St. Patrick's Day to celebrate that great holiday.

I'm wearing my Celtics green, which I wore to hundreds of Boston Celtics basketball games.

And I thought that the celebration of St. Patrick's Day is a good reason for discussing the history of America as a country that not only welcomed immigrants.

We are a nation of immigrants.

If you look at the accomplishments of America over the past 100 or so more years, you see so many of it comes from immigrants of Irish background, Italian background, Greek background, Russian background, Asian background, African background, every possible background you can imagine.

There's no country in the world, no country in the history of the world.

That has a more diverse ethnic population.

Israel is probably second because it didn't gather Jews from all over the world.

But the United States, I think, leads the way.

We are the leading country in the world in accepting immigrants and in immigrants helping us see our full potential as a country.

But that's the good news. The bad news is the history of America is also a history of anti-immigrant discrimination.

It probably started with the Irish, although one probably can trace it even earlier.

Obviously, if one talks about African slaves coming over, that's a whole different situation.

And we can talk about that separately.

But in terms of people voluntarily coming to the country as immigrants to try to strengthen our country, I guess it really begins with anti-Irish immigration.

In the days of the Civil War, we were notorious for taking young Irish men right off the boats and sending them as cannon fodder to fight in the Civil War.

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